Giorgio Armani's twitter account today was updated with news that Anderson Cooper will attend the Help Haiti Home dinner in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Giorgio Armani joined forces this year with longtime friend, esteemed actor and humanitarian Sean Penn, for a year-long initiative in support of J/P HRO (Haitian Relief Organization). We'll post pictures when they become available.

We had a request for last night's segment with Anderson and Dr. Gupta about the flu:

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

So VP Biden is going to push, back ground checks, as a solution rather than a total ban on semi-automatic weapons.Well the tragedy in Newton would have happened then, anyway, because Mommy, supposedly passed HER background check and her lovely, adorable son, got his hands on her legally bought deadly weapons.So the questions remains, how does a background check help this situation?It doesn't.We need what we had during the Clinton Administration, a total ban on semi-automatic weapons.And President Obama can use his executive powers to get this through, like Clinton did.It wasn't popular then and it isn't popular now, but it will save the lives of the innocent.Looking for crazy people is like looking for needles in a hay stack.It will appease some, but leave those that are not gun owners defenseless.This topic is relevant because it was discussed on 360.

Although I usually don't like giving attention to conspiracy theory nut cases, the first segment was excellent. Anderson had not-so-subtle disses against Prof. Tracy; one time pointing out he was a Communications Professor and should know how to talk to the media, know how to speak to large groups of people but still declined the offer to come on 360 to "defend his statements". Kay and Seitz-Wald were also excellent.

I don't remember Anderson's exact words but in effect he said Erica Lafferty called in during the show. So he put her on the air to answer a few questions. It seemed spontaneous and unplanned. The first segment usually lasts 12 to 16 minutes but Friday, because of Lafferty's call, it was 21 minutes. To make room, the segments on video games and the latest California shooter seemed to be a bit shorter.

During the panel on video games and gun control measures, I would have loved if if anyone mentioned the Chris Rock idea - make bullets incredibly expensive ("$5000 a bullet!")

Randi Kaye's report about the flu and sneezing on the subway was good. It also brought back memories about why I stopped watching "Friends" after a few seasons.

Okay, maybe 360 was squeezed for time but why cut the Bulletin instead of the Ridiculist? The Ridiculist had a couple funny clips of news anchors not being ready on live TV but it wasn't a great Ridiculist and it was ironic because Anderson never does them live anymore.

During 360, there was a commercial for Bill Maher's upcoming season premiere on HBO. Except it didn't say HBO until the very end, which made me get my hopes up that Maher was bringing his show to CNN. If CNN got Anthony Bourdain and Morgan Spurlock, why not Maher? Zucker! Come on! It would be awesome!

Anon, good point about the background check problem. Most of the time those shooters just use the weapons of a family member or friend who is a "good citizen" so while that might improve something, it definitely won't solve the problem. This doesn't even come close to what most other countries do to protect their citizens.

I usually think it is best not to give the conspiracy nuts any air time but it this case I think it was appropriate and the segment was great.

I've seen those conspiracies pop up on Youtube in the past month and I can't even express how absolutely sickening and disgusting those people are. There is really no limit to how low those nuts are willing to stoop. The problem is that there are more of those paranoid, gullable looneys out there than one would expect. It's a bit frightening that hate- and fear-mongering people like Alex Jones actually find a huge audience. So it was good to see the "thinking" of this particular brand of conspiracy nuts exposed in all it's craziness and ugliness.

And I think this is the kind of stuff that personally upsets Anderson.

As for the professor, I am sure the guy already regrets what he wrote. Anderson got him on his radar now and in recent years he got a whole number of people who held public offices/worked in education fired/to resign from their office.

That asst. state attorney who stalked and bullied a gay student, the school board member went off on a gay-bashing rant against gay teens who had committed suicide and Nir Rosen who had made those horrible comments about Laura Logan and that it had been funny if AC had been raped too. And those are only the ones I can think of at the top of my head. So I wouldn't be surprised if within the next couple of days the university would decide to get rid of the guy.

The segment about the flu was quite interesting and the Ridiculist I had a good chuckle at with the Ridiculist.

@Jaanza: Bill Maher on CNN? Gosh, that would be beyond awesome. I guess it remains to be seen if Zucker would like to keep it in the middle or become more partisan and "left" (I don't really like the way everything seems to be separated into left and right in the US but for lack of a better world...). But sadly, why would Bill want to leave HBO where he can say absolutely everything without censorship? On CNN it would just be a constant bleep and blurr fest so I don't think this is ever going to happen. But damn, the bater between Anderson and Bill would be glorious. *sobs*

Admins, thank you for posting the clip of Anderson and Sanjay talking about the flu! :)

@Jaanza: As a long time Bill Maher watcher, trust me, he's NOT coming to CNN.He's known to have been more than critical of CNN even though the stations are related, and his contract with HBO is very lucrative and cushy.He'd be a fool, which we both known he's not, to leave HBO.They give him far too much freedomand who'd want to be hampered by cable rules? He's a comedian who likes to keep it 'blue.'